Walt Disney Posts Record Annual Profit

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger continued to pitch his company’s digital future to investors on Thursday, even as the company reported a year of massive success for traditional movie releases like “Black Panther.”

Mr. Iger predicted an accelerated timeline for the megadeal driving the strategic shift to streaming, saying Disney’s acquisition of major assets of 21st Century Fox Inc. could close “meaningfully earlier” than the mid-2019 date previously projected.